Sustainable project protocol

Let me start with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol), which is the most widely used international accounting tool and framework related to greenhouse gas emissions. It is a result of a decade-long partnership between the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Standard includes Project Accounting Protocol and Guidelines, which is geared toward calculating reductions in GHG emissions from specific GHG-reduction projects. It also includes additional sector-specific protocols for Land Use, Land-Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and Grid-Connected Electricity Projects.

Protocol consists of sequential guidelines for project developers, although often some iterations are required for the proper assessment of greenhouse gas reductions. It consists of the following steps:

1. Defining the assessment boundary, i.e. identifying GHG sources and sinks that have to be considered. In addition to primary effects also the important secondary effects, which are unintended changes in GHG emissions elsewhere, need to be taken into account. Assessment requires differentiating the GHG project into one or more project activities.
2. Selecting a baseline procedure for estimating "baseline emissions" to which the GHG project activity emissions will be compared. Baseline procedure is a reference case - a hypothetical description of what would have happened in the absence of any climate change mitigation - and baseline candidates are alternative technologies or practices that could provide the same product or service as the project activity. Project has to bring additional GHG reductions that would not have been happened otherwise - a concept of additionality. Procedure can be either project-specific or based on a performance standard. Project-specific procedure identifies a baseline scenario specific to the proposed project activity whereas performance standard procedure produces an estimate of baseline emissions based on the analysis of all possible baseline candidates.
3. Identifying baseline candidates that should be considered and analysed to estimate baseline emissions.
4. Estimating baseline emissions either using the project-specific or the performance standard procedure.
5. Monitoring and quantifying GHG reductions.
6. Reporting GHG reductions.

Underlying principles in the GHG Project Accounting Protocol are generic and thus useful also in other sustainable projects. Protocol relies on the definition of an appropriate time frame as well as the reference baseline for estimating GHG reductions. Time frame should be long enough so that reductions can be properly estimated and compared to alternative technologies or practices. GPM consortium's PRiSM methodology applies the same principle in the P5 concept, where both short (process) and long-term (product) implications should be addressed.

Sustainable project protocol should rely on thorough and extensive investigation of the project costs and benefits, both in the short and long term. Extensive means that all the aspects as defined by P5 concept (people, planet, profit, process and product) must be considered. In practice this would mean that an environmental project must also evaluate social implications and vice versa. There are useful metrics and indicators to start with, such as ecological footprint and Human Development Index developed by United Nations Development Programme.

Sustainable outcomes from the project need to be additional meaning that the project should aim for improvements not otherwise accessible. A considerable effort should be done in the early evaluation and definition phase of the project to evaluate environmental, social and business related implications and to investigate thoroughly alternative ways of reaching project's objectives.